# Were there any areas where the Imperial Japanese Navy exceeded the US Navy during WWII? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 30, 2026, 5:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689 "2026-08-30T17:59:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Calder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Calder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calder)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2026, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/121 "2026-10-08T23:57:26Z")
> [@Capn\_Carl](#): > > > [@Calder](#): > > > > Japan was better at landing the first punch, and the US was better at absorbing punches and keeping its fleet going. > > In 1942? I don’t see this. IMO, If a carrier had an avgas/hangar fire, it was doomed. If it didn’t, it was about as hard to sink as I’d expect for its size. If you want to argue that the US damage control procedures in January 1942 were only somewhat better than Japan’s, I can agree with that. But they were still better. A large share of the crew had damage control stations in the US Navy, while Japan relied largely on specialist parties. The gap grew rapidly as 1942 went on. After gasoline vapor explosions sank Lexington at Coral Sea, US carriers began draining their gasoline lines and filling them with CO2 before an attack. Yorktown did it at Midway less than a month later. Design and operating habits helped too. US carriers had open-sided hangars that vented vapor, and they fueled and armed planes mostly on the flight deck. At Midway, the Japanese were rearming in enclosed hangars full of fueled planes and loose ordnance. The results showed. Yorktown took three bombs at Midway and was back up to 19–20 knots within about two hours, and Enterprise was landing aircraft within an hour of three bomb hits at Eastern Solomons. Thinking about it more, I think I missed the biggest, most important difference between the two navies in 1942, and perhaps one of the US Navy’s biggest doctrinal advantages. The US Navy was much better at learning from its mistakes. Don’t get me wrong, the Japanese wrote after-action reports; after all, Shattered Sword drew heavily on them. But US after-action reports were incredibly blunt and regularly criticized commanders, including senior officers. Lessons went out fleet-wide through Pacific Fleet bulletins and fleet letters, and the Bureau of Ships wrote a separate engineering report, the War Damage Reports, on every major ship loss or serious damage, analyzing how it happened and what should change. Japanese candor, by contrast, ran into concerns about face, and lessons spread poorly. The result was that the US Navy kept improving, often adopting a fix within weeks of a loss, and every battle made the next one better. Japan kept repeating many of the same mistakes, so the gap widened every year. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 12:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/122 "2026-10-09T00:14:41Z")
> [@Calder](#): > > Thinking about it more, I think I missed the biggest, most important difference between the two navies in 1942, and perhaps one of the US Navy’s biggest doctrinal advantages. The US Navy was much better at learning from its mistakes. I mentioned that above in response to your previous post, almost word for word: > [@TokyoBayer](#): > > In addition, the USN was much better at learning from mistakes than the IJN in most areas. ---
**Author:** ![Capn\_Carl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/838e76/32.png) [@Capn\_Carl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Capn_Carl)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/123 "2026-10-09T01:45:22Z")
> [@Calder](#): > > The results showed. Yorktown took three bombs at Midway and was back up to 19–20 knots within about two hours, and Enterprise was landing aircraft within an hour of three bomb hits at Eastern Solomons. The results showed what? Both were hit by 3 500 lb bombs while their hangars were empty. All of them detonated before reaching the thin armor over the machinery spaces, so the effects were non-critical. Maybe American damage control was better, but it doesn’t show here. OTOH, _Shokaku_ was twice hit by between 3 and 6 1000 pound bombs. These could have easily penetrated to the machinery and magazines of a _Yorktown_ but were stopped by the thicker deck armor of the Japanese carrier. ---
**Author:** ![Calder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Calder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calder)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 6:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/124 "2026-10-09T18:00:03Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > I mentioned that above in response to your previous post, almost word for word: Sorry, I wasn’t trying to steal your line. To be honest, I wasn’t thinking about your post when I was writing that. The 3rd paragraph wasn’t originally going to be in the post. As I wrote the 1st and 2nd paragraphs, I was thinking about US after-action reports and how US damage control procedures changed in such a short period of time. That naturally led into a comparison to Japan’s AAR being much milder and less blunt than US reports. I then did a bit of Googling to confirm I wasn’t wrong that Japan didn’t do detailed damage and loss reports for every ship suffering severe damage, and viola the 3rd paragraph was born. Rereading that paragraph, the one thing I would criticize is maybe I got a little bit too exuberant about how important US Navy’s ability to improve. After all, when you build a little over 7 carriers for every 1 the enemy does, that has to be the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd most important reason you won the war. Not to downplay how effective US AAR were. Hell, I wish even one of the companies I worked for was half as effective as they were at incorporating lessons learned. The US Navy deserves a lot of credit. ---
**Author:** ![Calder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Calder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calder)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2026, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/125 "2026-10-09T18:30:45Z")
Fair point that those bomb hits alone don’t prove much, and Shokaku shows Japanese carriers could take real punishment. But I’d push back on “non-critical.” One of Yorktown’s three hits knocked out most of her boilers and left her dead in the water, and another forced the flooding of her forward magazines. And the empty hangars are kind of my point. That was US practice, not luck. US carriers drained their fuel lines and filled them with CO2, fueled and armed on the flight deck, not the hangar, and when an attack was coming, launched whatever planes were aboard just to get them off the ship. At Midway, Yorktown stopped refueling and got her fighters into the air before Hiryu’s bombers arrived. At Eastern Solomons, Enterprise launched her remaining bombers and torpedo planes just ahead of the Japanese strike, nominally against a contact report that was hours old, but mainly to get fueled planes off the ship before the bombs hit. I can’t think of a Japanese example of that. They spotted strikes from the hangar and built everything around massed, escorted strikes, which made launching planes just to clear the carrier much harder for them ---
**Author:** ![Isilder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/cc9497/32.png) [@Isilder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isilder)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/126 "2026-10-11T11:44:11Z")
> [@Calder](#): > > Due to everything Tokyo has already laid out and the factors above, I think Mitscher basically said to himself “I know more than the commander does” and ordered Ring to fly out at 265 degrees to look for the (nonexistent) 2nd carrier group. But every precedent is that the Kido Butai operated as one task group. Pearl Harbour, Darwin, Indian Ocean raids. They had the idea to maximise strength … Why allow a defeat in detail when you can just operate them together ? Even if the americans knew they were split up, but didn’t know where the missing two were, then how best to find them ? Surely just turning up at the location of the two known should work out, chances are the missing two will come to help , or the missing two would be located by then … And its so very dumb to send the flight off on a bearing telling them “the target is on this bearing” rather than informing them that they are doing recon now ??? Ring was extremely determined to find the target , even going past the range fuel allowed… Surely Mitcher would get on the blower and say "um guys, your at your fuel limit, yeah we sent you out on a speculative bearing, come back . ". ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/127 "2026-10-11T19:13:17Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > But every precedent is that the Kido Butai operated as one task group. > > Pearl Harbour, Darwin, Indian Ocean raids. We can see that clearly with the benefit of hindsight. It wasn’t so obvious at the time. There were no spotting reports from Pearl Harbor, offhand I don’t think there were any from the Darwin or Indian Ocean raids, and the quality of spotting reports during WWII, particularly at this stage, was always questionable at best. Moreover, the Kido Butai can and did detach elements. _Hiryu_ and _Soryu_ were detached to assist the second landing on Wake Island. _Shokaku_ and _Zuikaku_ were detached for what became the Battle of the Coral Sea. Even in the examples given, Pearl Harbor was the only time it fully operated together, Darwin was conducted with 4 carriers, the Indian Ocean raid with 5. There’s also the factor that carriers not “properly” part of the Kido Butai operated independently of it. In the only carrier vs carrier engagement in history prior to Midway, _Shoho_ was operating separately from the 2 IJN fleet carrier at Coral Sea. At Midway itself, _Junyo_ and _Ryujo_ were tasked as part of the Aleutian Islands operation that was supposed to pull the American carriers north from Pearl Harbor. _Hosho_ was attached to the main body. _Zuiho_ was part of the Midway invasion force. ---
**Author:** ![SunUp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ea5d25/32.png) [@SunUp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SunUp)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2026, 10:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/128 "2026-10-11T22:47:39Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > A US scouting plane had sighted the Japanese carriers, but only reported two. There was a question if the Japanese would have their carriers in one or two groups and while the planes from Enterprise went after where the Japanese should have been based on their speed and heading, it’s thought that Ring and Mitschel decided to go there they thought a second group would be. They flew off west instead of south west, except part way through, the leader of the torpedo bombers disregarded orders and took off with his squadron. > [@Calder](#): > > Due to everything Tokyo has already laid out and the factors above, I think Mitscher basically said to himself “I know more than the commander does” and ordered Ring to fly out at 265 degrees to look for the (nonexistent) 2nd carrier group. That is why Waldron argued, both before launch and in the air, that they were on the wrong heading, and eventually disobeyed Ring’s direct order to stay with the formation and flew southwest to attack the Japanese carriers. It also explains why Ring overruled Waldron’s objections. These outline the central points for what I would consider the “blame Mitscher” hypothesis. And there is support for all these points in the literature - the warning that the Japanese may be operating in separate groups, trying to keep Mitscher’s culpability out of the AAR, and the simple fact of the choice of heading. But there are two big questions with this hypothesis: 1. How did Mitscher expect his planes to get to a following group and back given their predicted range? Kido Butai, in the event, was already at a fairly long distance from TF16, given how McClusky’s planes were getting low on fuel when they got back to their carriers. Would another 60-80 nautical miles of travel out to (and then back from) a trailing task group be feasible for Hornet’s air group to be able to return home? 2. Why were the squadron leaders not briefed on this plan? I don’t know of any sources that claim that there was an attempt to communicate this plan to them. Waldron’s reaction seems to point to his wanting to engage the contact that had already been spotted, and I question whether he would have done the same thing had he been told their mission was to search for a different group. At least Ring’s second-in-command (the senior squadron commander) should have been told as they would have had to take over command in case Ring’s plane had a mechanical issue. But if this was the plan, it didn’t seem to go farther down past Ring’s echelon. So the “blame Ring” hypothesis I’ve seen holds that, under the stress of battle (which he was in for the first time), Mitscher made an error in his calculation of the heading to attack the known contact. Ring looked at his calculation and Mitscher’s, and either did not try to correct his superior’s work or (and here it gets controversial) was relieved that the heading given would keep them out of the danger of battle, and so gave that heading as an order to his squadron commanders, overriding any concerns they may have had about its correctness. I generally think the “blame Mitscher” hypothesis seems more likely, but the “blame Ring” hypothesis is a little more Ockham’s-razor-friendly. Is there something I’m missing in my brief outline of the latter? ---
**Author:** ![Calder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e99b99/32.png) [@Calder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Calder)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2026, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/129 "2026-10-12T18:02:00Z")
> [@SunUp](#): > > I generally think the “blame Mitscher” hypothesis seems more likely, but the “blame Ring” hypothesis is a little more Ockham’s-razor-friendly. Is there something I’m missing in my brief outline of the latter? Not really, at least nothing factual. I have a couple of suppositions that look at it differently. One problem is the sources: Hornet’s squadron after-action reports were never included, Waldron died in the battle, and most of what we know comes from interviews decades later, when memory and hindsight both had time to work. The accounts do generally agree that Waldron strongly objected to the course before launch. 1. To me, that argues against a simple calculation error. If your most aggressive squadron commander is arguing the course is wrong, you’d expect someone to double-check the numbers. A deliberate choice that Waldron lost an argument over fits better than a math mistake no one caught. 2. On range, I don’t think it’s as bad as it looks. A group trailing Kido Butai along its line of advance would be off to the side as seen from TF16, so it only adds maybe 25 miles, not the full 60–80. Roughly working it out, a trailing group would sit around 255–260° from TF16, which is awfully close to the 265° Hornet’s group actually flew. (My positions are approximate, so someone with the Shattered Sword maps handy is welcome to check me.) Fighter range was still marginal, and the group flew well past that point finding nothing, which is what ran the Wildcats out of fuel. But a search for a trailing group wasn’t wildly out of range. 3. On why the squadron leaders weren’t told: Tokyo is right that Spruance’s order didn’t specify a course, so you could argue Mitscher was within his authority. But he was well out on a limb. If the squadron commanders had been briefed on a second-group search, their after-action reports would have said so, and those are exactly the reports missing from Hornet’s AAR. Keeping it between Mitscher and Ring would have kept it off paper. That’s speculation, but it would explain both the silence and the missing reports. As for Ockham’s razor, I’d argue the “Ring made an error” theory isn’t as simple as it looks. It still has to explain why Hornet’s report gave a false course and left out the squadron reports. An honest mistake doesn’t need a cover-up. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2026, 9:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689/130 "2026-10-16T09:47:10Z")
> [@Isilder](#): > > They had the idea to maximise strength … Why allow a defeat in detail when you can just operate them together ? @Dissonance has already answered this, but to add some more details. Prewar US carrier doctrine was based on war gaming and such that showed that having carriers operating separately was less risky. The idea was that whoever got their attacks off first would win, and if the carriers weren’t grouped together, they had a better chance of surviving and attack on them. This doctrine was developed before better air defenses were available, including radar, coordinated CAP, IFF and such. The assumption was that since the US operated carriers that way then the IJN would as well. Orders from Nimitz specified that IJN carriers may be operating in two separate groups. That part didn’t originate with the local commanders. From [the article](https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2012/may/mitscher-and-mystery-midway) I linked above: > Evidence of this assumption is in Nimitz’s initial orders to the task-force commanders and the commanders on Midway. In those orders, **Nimitz suggested that “one or more [of the enemy] carriers may take up close-in daylight positions” for the attack on Midway, while “additional carrier groups” operated against American surface forces.** In the briefing that Mitscher’s intelligence officer, Lieutenant Stephen Jurika, gave to the pilots on board the _Hornet_ the night before the battle, Jurika told them “there were at least two carriers, two battleships, several cruisers and about five destroyers in the attack force which would attempt to take Midway” and that “the support force some distance behind contained the rest of their forces.” My bolding. So, the idea of two groups wasn’t out of the question. In fact, a case could be made that it was understandable, because the IJN was keeping half of forces back in reserve anyway in case an American fleet was spotted. > [@Isilder](#): > > And its so very dumb to send the flight off on a bearing telling them “the target is on this bearing” rather than informing them that they are doing recon now ??? Ring was extremely determined to find the target , even going past the range fuel allowed… Surely Mitcher would get on the blower and say "um guys, your at your fuel limit, yeah we sent you out on a speculative bearing, come back . ". The problem is nothing in the story really make senses, and there was a coverup afterwards, so we don’t really know what happened. Normally, you would have expected that the commander would have told the air group commander who would have told the squadron leaders, but obviously something was wrong this time. The radar at the time didn’t couldn’t track the planes at that distance, and it was the responsibility of the pilots to keep track of their fuel. > [@SunUp](#): > > Ring looked at his calculation and Mitscher’s, and either did not try to correct his superior’s work or (and here it gets controversial) was relieved that the heading given would keep them out of the danger of battle, and so gave that heading as an order to his squadron commanders, overriding any concerns they may have had about its correctness. I donno. I don’t know enough about the people involved but was there any indication of cowardness on Ring’s part? I don’t know if having an air group command being a coward would make the scenario more likely, especially as he went on obtain flag rank. > [@SunUp](#): > > 1. Why were the squadron leaders not briefed on this plan? I don’t know of any sources that claim that there was an attempt to communicate this plan to them. Waldron’s reaction seems to point to his wanting to engage the contact that had already been spotted, and I question whether he would have done the same thing had he been told their mission was to search for a different group. The counterpoint I’ve heard is that Spruance’s orders to Mitscher were that _Hornet_ and _Enterprise_ were to attack the same target, so a deviation from that would have been problematic. It’s been suggested that this would be a possible reason that the information was kept b There doesn’t seem to be enough reliable information to really understand what happened. For me, it seems that most or all of the historians I admire have placed the blame on Mitscher. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-there-any-areas-where-the-imperial-japanese-navy-exceeded-the-us-navy-during-wwii/1032689.md?page=6)